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AT HOME & ABROAD

One Mississippi Negro Who Didn’t Go to College

RONALD A. HOLLANDER

JAMES H. MEREDITH was not the first Negro to seek the educational opportunities offered at Mississippi’s all-white universities. Two others tried and failed before he succeeded. One was dispatched for a time to the state mental hospital, the theory being that “any nigger who tried to enter Ole Miss must be crazy.” The other was Clyde Kennard.

Clyde Kennard, a native of Hattiesburg, comes of farming people: growers of cotton and corn, peas and potatoes. Hattiesburg, a city of thirty-five thousand in the southeastern part of the state, is the home of the University of Southern Mississippi. Mississippi Southern College, as it was called in 1959 when Kennard applied, now has an enrollment of some 4,200. Basically a liberal-arts school, it prides itself on its Fine Arts Department. The school is entirely state-supported, depending for its funds upon appropriations of state tax moneys. President William W. McCain is responsible to a state board of trustees. White-columned, red-bricked, broad-walked, and ivied, with lily pond and kissing bridge, the campus impresses most visitors by its calm and charm. Msc [sic], as it was called locally, was approaching its fiftieth anniversary at the time of Kennard’s application.

Leona Smith, Kennard’s mother (she remarried when he was nine, five years after the death of his father), saw to it that her five children attended Sunday school and “did their lessons.” Clyde, her youngest, was a quiet, obedient, considerate son. He left Hattiesburg at twelve to live with his sister Sara in Chicago.

After paratroop service in Germany and in Korea, Kennard returned to Chicago, where he spent three years at the University. With money he had saved in Korea, he bought his parents a small farm on the outskirts of Hattiesburg. In 1955, at the age of twenty-eight, with a year of school remaining, he was forced to return to Hattiesburg. His stepfather had been disabled, and Kennard went home to run the farm.

FINISHING his education was still uppermost in his mind. Mississippi Southern was a mere fifteen-minute drive from the farm. Yes, he was told, MSC does accept senior-year transfer students, but…Kennard began having discussions with President McCain. They talked over a period of some three years, McCain finding the applicant “courteous at all times.”

The decision to apply to Mississippi Southern did not come easily for Kennard. But when it came, it came from Kennard alone. Speaking to a friend, he said, “It’s a public school. I’d like to go there.”

“What if you come up missing?” the friend asked.

“History is in the making, Kennard answered.

Although possessing what a preacher has called “an upbuilding feeling for his race,” Kennard didn’t believe in a forced, violent integration of the schools. “He didn’t care,” his mother has said. “He’d offered to take his courses at night.” Nor did he relish the idea od seeking court orders to compel the college to admit him. When asked if he thought he’d be able to enter Mississippi Southern without a court order, Kennard replied, “There people at MSC are more liberal. They’re not like the old ones. I’ll get in without the courts.” (Three years after Kennard’s last application, President McCain explained his views on segregation: “Why, I’ve got 270 years behind my feelings.” Although Kennard later attempted to organize an NAACP Youth Council in Hattiesburg, he refused offers of legal aid. He explained his position in a letter to the Hattiesburg American. In Hattiesburg the letter drew the comment, “No nigger coulda’ written that.”

He wrote: “…[This has] led me to request that I be permitted to enroll at Mississippi Southern College, without a court order to do so. I, too, am a solid believer in the ability of the individual States to control their own affairs. I believe that if this state should lead out with only the smallest amount of integration it would never have to worry about Federal intervention.

“I have done all that is within my power to follow a reasonable course in this matter…I have tried to make it clear that my love for the State of Mississippi and my hope for its peaceful prosperity is equal to any man’s alive. The thought of presenting this request before a Federal Court for consideration, with all the publicity and misrepresentation which that would bring about, makes my heart heavy….”

In 1958 Kennard was invited by the then Governor J. P. Coleman to Jackson, the state capital. President McCain of MSC was also at the meeting. It was an election year in Mississippi; the pending application was

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an unpleasant topic for any election campaign. Kennard was told that he could select any college in America that would accept him, and that the state of Mississippi would pay his expenses. He refused. As he had explained in his letter to the American:

“Mississippi Southern College is the only State supported four year college in this area and my situation at home makes it very difficult for me to leaves home to continue my education. On this account I have been unable to attend school for nearly five years. By attending Mississippi Southern College my problem would be solved, as I could live at home and attend school.”

Governor Coleman explained that the political situation was hot and urged Kennard to wait. He said that time would take care of things. He’d try to work it out. Kennard wanted to know when; Coleman couldn’t say—someday. He asked that Kennard withhold his application until after the primary in 1959. Kennard agreed, but Coleman’s hand-picked candidate to succeed him lost anyway.

In the fall of 1959 Kennard resubmitted his application. Several people had been approached to try to persuade him not to. The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the executive investigatory body to preserve and enforce segregation, had sent its men to the homes and offices of various people in Hattiesburg. “I am here at the request of the governor,” announced one, urging a white religious leader and friend of Kennard’s to plead with him not to apply. The head of the Hattiesburg Negro school system and a Negro principal were also approached. But as Kennard put it, “It’s a question of principle.”

The Moonshine Method

The date for Kennard’s formal interview had been set for Tuesday, September 15. Despite the warning of a local civil rights leader that McCain was in contact with the White Citizens’ Council, Kennard continued to trust him. He took no special notice when President McCain called as he was leaving that morning to find out just when he expected to be on campus. Kennard first drove his mother to their potato patch in his 1956 Mercury station wagon. She intended to “do some hoeing, pick some peas, and pull some vines for the cows.” Kennard was to drive by later to pick up the vines. He continued into town, by a back road that was the quickest route from the potato patch.

In town, Kennard stopped briefly at the house of a clergyman he knew to leave a statement he had prepared. The minister had called Kennard the night before suggesting that he prepare a statement asking for a lawyer to represent him in the event of his being jailed. It was about 9:45. Kennard continued on.

[In the middle of the column is a sketch-style drawing of a black man in white clothes standing in front of a jail cell. There are shadows across his face, and the man is holding books in his right hand against his leg. Artist signature is in lower right-hand corner, reads [Wilson?]]

He stopped for a shoeshine, then stopped again to give a lift to a friend of his mother’s, dropping her off before reaching the campus. He went into the president’s office to see McCain.

McCain was not alone. Zack J. Van Landingham, chief investigator for the Sovereignty Commission had apparently just happened by, and was seated in the office. After twelve or fifteen minutes, the interview ended. Kennard returned to his locked car, where he was met by two waiting constables. They placed him under arrest, charging him with reckless driving. Kennard have the constables his keys and they opened the car door. They had trouble starting the car. Kennard showed them how. He was then taken to the Hattiesburg police station in the constables’ car by one of the officers. The other drove Kennard’s car. Some minutes later, as Kennard was being questioned, one of the constables entered with a paper bag containing five half-pints of liquor, claiming that it had been found under the front seat of the station wagon. Clyde Kennard was booked and charged with reckless driving and possession of liquor, which is illegal in “dry” Mississippi.

His application had of course been rejected. The college’s statement read: “Clyde Kennard, a Negro presumably residing in Forrest County, today appeared at Mississippi Southern College in connection with his request to be admitted to the college. He was denied because of deficiencies and irregularities in his application papers.” McCain said that he could not reveal the irregularities because “Once a prospective student’s records become a part of the registrar’s records we are prohibited from releasing any part of that information except on the student’s request.”

Concerning the interview, McCain stated: “Generally we went over what we had discussed in the past. He was determined to press his application. And we denied it. That’s about it.” He told newsmen: “Hundreds of students are refused admission every year for the same reasons listed in Kennard’s rejection.” Kennard himself said that he had been given three reasons for his rejection: irregularities in his medical records making his “moral character” questionable, the fact that Mississippi Southern had not received his records from the University of Chicago, and the alleged refusal of the University of Chicago to readmit Kennard after three years’ attendance, which Kennard held was untrue. William Van Cleve, the registrar of the University of Chicago, agrees, “Kennard was never refused readmission. In fact, the University expected him to resume studies in the winter of 1957. He left here with a clean slate.”

IN A RECENT conversation, President McCain explained that Kennard had advanced the dates on his medical certificate and character recommendations by a year. Although McCain conceded that these documents could have been prepared for an earlier application, the dates nevertheless were falsified, he pointed

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[Above the left and middle columns on the page is a sketch of a building with several trees and plants in front of it. The artist’s signature is in the bottom right-hand corner and is illegible. The overall sketch is dark and is difficult to see, not sure if stylistic choice or occurred during the scanning process.]

out. “And Mississippi Southern does not deal in forged documents.” He disclaimed any knowledge of a meeting with the governor, denied that there was any communication between Mississippi Southern and the Sovereignty Commission, and could not be sure whether an application had actually been pending in 1958, the date the documents originally bore. McCain indicated that there were several other reasons for Kennard’s being rejected, but that “one is sufficient.” He said that while Kennard was applying, he had had the Mississippi Southern security force investigate Kennard’s part. “Shady dealings were discovered.” Did McCain mean that Kennard had committed crimes or broken the law? “Just shady dealings.” McCain would not elaborate. He pointed out that he is employed by a board of trustees, that two choices face him: to follow their decisions or to resign. He can do more, the former general feels, to develop honesty, culture, and individual integrity as president of Mississippi Southern than he can in a “silly martyrdom for one Negro.”

The constables who arrested Kennard, Charlie Ward and Lee Daniels, denied having advance knowledge of his pre-publicized plan to enroll at MSC. Although there were already several law officers on campus when Kennard arrived, including Mississippi Highway Patrol Chief Bill Hood, as well as the head of the Sovereignty Commission, both War and Daniels claimed to be unaware that Kennard “would be on campus to carry out an integration attempt.” They claimed that they had simply seen a speeding car on the highway, followed it, then lost it, picked it up again on the campus, and waited for its driver to return.

“It’s obvious those men planted that whiskey in Clyde’s car,” a cousin of Kennard’s said. “He neither drinks nor smokes. In fact, he doesn’t even drink soft drinks.” The constables explained that the liquor was found under the front seat of the car during a search conducted while the prisoner was being questioned. One of them added that he had “heard something rattling” when he drove Kennard’s station wagon into town. “They didn’t mention liquor until I was in jail,” said Kennard at the time. “They brought it in and said they found it in my car.” When it was pointed out that Kennard didn’t drink, one of the constables knowingly commented, “Most bootleggers don’t.”

Kennard was convicted in a hearing before a justice of the peace and fined six hundred dollars and costs. It is customary in such unrecorded hearings, when an appeal is intended, for the defense to withhold its evidence and witnesses for the higher court trial. Kennard’s attorney followed this course. But an appeal was never heard. Because of misleading information given Kennard by the Forrest County district attorney, Harold B. Cubley, by Justice of the Peace T. C. Hobby, and to his attorney by the jailer of Forrest County with whom bond was posted, the defense was not present at the seating of the docket for the appeal. Appeals to have the original appeal heard were twice denied by Mississippi courts. Finally, the lower court ruling denying the original appeal were overthrown by the Mississippi Supreme Court. However, this ruling did not come until 1961, at which time the state merely remanded the case to the files. Kennard had already been convicted of another offense and sentenced to seven years at Parchman Penitentiary.

The Making of a Felon

After the 1959 application was rejected, Governor Coleman is reported to have said that “If Clyde did reapply, there’d be no way of holding him out because his record was sufficient. There’d be no alternative but to close the college.” In Mississippi, however, there is a law that no one with a felony on his record will be admitted to a state school. Burglary is a felony.

Early on Sunday morning, September 25, 1960, the Forrest County Co-operative warehouse was burglarized of twenty-five dollars’ worth of chicken feed. Clyde Kennard was named as an accessory in the burglary. He was arrested that same morning.

The feed had actually been stolen by an illiterate nineteen-year-old Negro, Johnny Lee Roberts, who had been employed by the Co-op as a helper on the trucks and had delivered feed to Kennard’s farm. He testified that that morning, at 4:40, he had broken into the Co-op warehouse through two rear sliding doors which he had previously left unbarred. He loaded five sacks of egg or laying mash worth five dollars each into his car, but before he could leave, the night watchman arrived to investigate. Roberts retreated into the shadows. The watchman made no attempt to stop the theft or to locate the burglar. He merely noted Roberts’s license plate and left to call the police.

Roberts, according to his own testimony, emerged from his hiding place unseen and drove directly to Kennard’s chicken house, about two miles beyond the farmhouse, where he put the feed into the unlocked egg house and then drove back to the farmhouse. He claimed that Kennard was waiting for him in front of the house and paid him ten dollars for the feed, making no mention of when the rest would be paid. After his arrest, Roberts claimed that it was Ken-

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nard who had persuaded him to steal the feed. He denied that he had ever stolen any before, but claimed that one Thursday evening Kennard came to Roberts’s house and asked about getting some feed “on the side.” Several days later there was a second meeting, said Roberts, at which time Kennard suggested that Roberts leave the rear doors of the warehouse unbarred. Roberts claimed that he did so before the Co-op closed at noon on Saturday.

Sunday morning, after Roberts had confessed, the police arrived to arrest Kennard. He was taken to jail at about 8:30, and the police returned to search the premises at about noon. Deputy Sheriff W. V. Oubre testified that the feed hoppers were filled with mash, and that the chickens were “having a ball.” More important, he said that he found a feed ticket, used to identify each sack, “on a trash pile out back.” The number on this ticket was then shown to be next in sequence to the number on a bag of feed found loaded on a dolly at the warehouse door. It seemed that Roberts had intended to take ten sacks, but was frightened off with only five loaded in his car.

The tangible evidence in the case would have convicted Kennard only of possession of stolen goods. It was Roberts’s testimony that supported the charge of his being an accessory to burglary. Under the Mississippi Code, “Every person who shall be an accessory to any felony before the fact, shall be deemed and considered a principal, and shall be indicted and punished as such.” Roberts, after testifying for the state, received a five-year probation sentence.

Due Process of Law

The circuit court of Forrest County, Judge Stanton A. Hall presiding, convened on November 14, 1960. Jess Brown, Kennard’s attorney, moved to have the indictment dismissed on the ground that Negroes were “systematically excluded” from the grand jury, but Judge Hall overruled the motion. A request to see the voter registration records was similarly denied. (Before a state constitutional amendment had been ratified the week before, jurors were required to be registered voters.) A Hattiesburg attorney, in practice for thirty-eight years, testified for the state on the motion: “Rather than break it down by years, I’d say that through the period of my practice, I have on numerous occasions seen negroes come into the court room in response to process as prospective jurors, and invariably I have seen those negroes excuse themselves, because they were good men, and they knew that there was no facility for the separation of the races…in our court room structure, and so invariably they would excuse themselves, and I admired them for it.

The chronology of the two supposed meetings between Roberts and Kennard was crucial in establishing

[Paragraph is broken up by a sketch of two men wearing hats and what appear to be suits. The one on the right is seated, with an open newspaper in his hands, and is looking at the viewer. The man on the left is standing close to the other man’s right shoulder, body angled towards the other man, his hands are in his pockets, and he is looking to the right side of the sketch. Both men’s faces are darkened by shadows and are indistinguishable, and therefore their race cannot be determined. The artist’s initial is in the bottom right corner and is illegible.]

Kennard as an accessory. For Roberts to have acted on the alleged suggestion from Kennard that the rear doors of the warehouse be left unbarred, the suggestion must have been made prior to noon on Saturday, the Co-op’s closing house. Roberts’s testimony was anything but clear on this point.

Hattiesburg District Attorney James Finch questioned Roberts concerning the meetings, the dates of which were never given. The transcript reveals a court stenographer with a sensitive if somewhat biased ear for dialect:

A. (Roberts): “On Thursday, I think. He seen me one Thursday, and then one Friday night on Mobile [Street] when he seen me again.”

Q. (Finch): All right. When was the next time that you saw Clyde?”

A. “One Friday night.”

Q. “Where were you then?”

A. "Hit was one Saturday night on Mobile when I was makin’ groceries.”

***

Q. “And what, if anything, did he say to you about how you would get [the feed]?”

A. “Well, ‘bout de door. Leavin’ the door open.”

Q. “Now, what about that?”

A. “He say, leave de door open where hit’s fastened, and I won’t have to do anything but shove it open.”

Roberts obviously was confused concerning the day of the supposed second meeting, and Finch seems to have overlooked his having said “Saturday.” As the testimony continued, Finch noted the slip and attempted to rectify it. Roberts, however, only became further entangled:

Q. (Finch): “Now, this conversation you had with Kennard on a Saturday night; was that the Saturday night immediately before you went in on Sunday morning?”

A. (Roberts): “Dat’s right.”

Q. “Huh? It was?”

A. “Yassuh, dat’s right.”

Q. “All right. What time did you leave the Co-op that Saturday?”

A. “Twelve o’clock.”

Q. “Now, Johnny Lee, are you or not confused as to the Saturday or Friday that you talked to Kennard? Was it about a week before you went in on Sunday?”

A. “Yassuh, ‘bout a week.”. [sic]

ATTORNEY YOUNG (for Kennard): “Object, Your Honor. He’s leading the witness.”

THE COURT: “Yes, I sustain as leading.”

Q. "How long was it before you went in the Co-op was it that you talked to Kennard the last time?”

A. “De last time I talked to ‘im?”

Q. “Yes.”

A. “Well, I talked to him dat Saturday night, and I went in dere dat Sunday morning, at twenty minutes to five.”

Q. “Now, Johnny, I don’t want to confuse you, but when did you leave the door unlocked?”

A. “Dat Saturday at dinner. See,

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we closed at twelve o’clock on Saturday evenings.”

Q. “Had you or not been told how to leave that door unlatched before you saw Kennard that last time?”

A. “I didn’t git you.”

Q. “Had you already been told by Kennard how to get in the place?”

A. “Yassuh.”

Q. “All right. When did he tell you how to get in it?”

A. “Well, he tole me on Thursday.”

Q. “On Thursday. All right, now, you say you closed…”

The all-white local jury took just ten minutes to decide on a guilty verdict for Kennard. Judge Hall gave him the maximum sentence of seven years. The Jackson State Times commented that one year for each $3.57 stolen seemed to be petty larceny rather than burglary. The State Times is now defunct. The case was appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which affirmed the ruling. Certiorari was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.

AFTER TWO YEARS in prison, Kennard does not seem bitter. He still feels that there are “good people at Mississippi Southern.” He writes to his mother every week, but he doesn’t want her to visit unless it’s proved that he’ll have to be there “a long long time.” He told her to pretend that he’s still in the Army.

In Hattiesburg, there is still occasional mention of Kennard’s letter to the American, especially of one paragraph:

“I admit that we have had and still have to a large extent, lower economic and moral standards than many of our white neighbors. However, we must realize that this condition is not a cause for segregation, but the effect of segregation and discrimination. The more segregation and discrimination he have in our community the more shall we continue to have ignorance and immorality and poverty.”

James Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi ought to give Clyde Kennard a good deal of satisfaction. In a year and a half Meredith is scheduled to earn his degree. Clyde Kennard, however, faces five more years at Parchman Penitentiary.